Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

We Will Not Be Divided

notdivided.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 912 posts

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#521

Post by skissane »

arw0n wrote: post #467
snickerbockers wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me put it this way: DoD needs a new drone and they want some gimmicky AI bullshit. They contract the drone from Lockheed. Lockheed is not allowed to source the gimmicky AI bullshit from Anthropic because they have been declared a supply-chain risk on the basis that they have publicly stated their intention to produce products which will refuse certain orders from the military.

There seems to be a massive misunderstanding here - I'm not sure on whose side. In my understanding, if the DoD orders an autonomous drone, it would probably write in the ITT that the drone needs to be capable of doing autonomous surveillance. If Lockheed uses Anthropic under the hood, it does not meet those criteria, and cannot reasonably join the bid? What the declaration of supply chain risk does though is, that n…

> Who in their right minds wants to have the military have the capabilities to do mass surveillance of their own citizens?

Who in their right minds wants to have the US military have the capability to carry out an unprovoked first strike on Moscow, thereby triggering WW3, bringing about nuclear armageddon?

And yet, do contracts for nuclear-armed missiles (Boeing for the current LGM-30 Minuteman ICBMs, Northrop Grumman for its replacement the LGM-35 Sentinel expected to enter service sometime next decade, and Lockheed Martin for the Trident SLBMs) contain clauses saying the Pentagon can't do that? I'm pretty sure they don't.

The standard for most military contracts is "the vendor trusts the Pentagon to use the technology in accordance with the law and in a way which is accountable to the people through elected officials, and doesn't seek to enforce that trust through contractual terms". There are some exceptions – e.g. contracts to provide personnel will generally contain explicit restrictions on their scope of work – but historically classified computer systems/services contracts haven't contained field of use restrictions on classified computer systems.

If that's the wrong standard for AI, why isn't it also the wrong standard for nuclear weapons delivery systems? A single ICBM can realistically kill millions directly, and billions indirectly (by being the trigger for a full nuclear exchange). Does Claude possess equivalent lethal potential?

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#522

Post by Meekro »

colonCapitalDee wrote: post #380
Meekro wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right, this isn't about a specific request but about defense contractors not getting to draw moral red lines. Palmer Luckey's statement on X/Twitter reflects the same idea: https://x.com/PalmerLuckey/status/2027500334999081294 The thinking seems to be that you can't have every defense contractor coming in with their own, separate set of red lines that they can adjudicate themselves and enforce unilater…

There's a hell of a difference between "we don't like your terms so we're going to use a different supplier" and "we don't like your terms, so we're going to use the power of the federal government to compel you to change them". The president is the commander-in-chief of the military, but Anthropic is not part of the military! Outside serving the public interest in a crisis, the president has no right to compel Anthr…

I'd encourage you to look up the Defense Production Act. Its powers are probably broad enough that the President could unilaterally force Anthropic to do this whether or not it wants to. It's the same logic that would allow him to force an auto manufacturer to produce tanks. And the law doesn't care whether we are in a crisis or not. It's enough that he determine (on his own) that this action is "necessary or appropriate to promote the national defense."

However, it looks like Trump isn't going to go that route-- they're just going to add Anthropic to a no-buy list, and use a different AI provider.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#524

Post by etchalon »

nickysielicki wrote: post #471
tyre wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply chain risk is not meant for this. The government isn't banning Anthropic because using it harms national security. They are banning it in retribution for Anthropic taking a stand. It's the same as Trump claiming emergency powers to apply tariffs, when the "emergency" he claimed was basically "global trade exists." Yes, the government can choose to purchase or not. No, supply chain risk is absolutely not correc…

> The government isn't banning Anthropic because using it harms national security. They are banning it in retribution for Anthropic taking a stand. You might be completely right about their real motivations, but try to steelman the other side. What they might argue in court: Suppose DoD wants to buy an autonomous missile system from some contractor. That contractor writes a generic visual object tracking library, whi…

I would hope the DoD would test things before using them in the theater of war.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#525

Post by Meekro »

markisus wrote: post #345
Meekro wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right, this isn't about a specific request but about defense contractors not getting to draw moral red lines. Palmer Luckey's statement on X/Twitter reflects the same idea: https://x.com/PalmerLuckey/status/2027500334999081294 The thinking seems to be that you can't have every defense contractor coming in with their own, separate set of red lines that they can adjudicate themselves and enforce unilater…

Of course a contractor could not decide to unilaterally shut off their missile system, because that would be a contract violation. A contractor may try to negotiate that unilateral shut off ability with the government, and the government should refuse those terms based on democratic principles, as Luckey said. But suppose the contractor doesn’t want to give up that power. Is it okay for the government to not only rej…

It sounds like the "supply chain risk" designation is just about anyone who works with the DoD not using them, so their code doesn't accidentally make it into any final products through some sub-sub-subcontractor. Since they've made it clear that they don't want to be a defense contractor (and accept the moral problems that go with it), the DoD is just making sure they don't inadvertently become one.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#526

Post by etchalon »

nickysielicki wrote: post #490
geysersam wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No domestic company has ever before been declared a supply chain risk. If this is the normal way of excluding a supplier from a bidding, are you saying the DoD has never before excluded a domestic supplier from a bidding?

That’s because no company who has ever sold weapons to the government has ever been brazen enough to tell the government how they can and cannot use their purchase. It’s unprecedented because most companies that sell to the government are publicly traded and have a board that would never let this happen. It’s unprecedented because Anthropic is behaving like a reckless startup. That’s what they will argue, anyway.

This is just factually incorrect.

To begin with, the existing contract included the language on usage.

Other companies also have such language about usage. It's fairly standard, and is little more than licensing terms.

The idea this is unprecedented is some PR talking point nonsense.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#527

Post by Meekro »

jbritton wrote: post #463
Meekro wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right, this isn't about a specific request but about defense contractors not getting to draw moral red lines. Palmer Luckey's statement on X/Twitter reflects the same idea: https://x.com/PalmerLuckey/status/2027500334999081294 The thinking seems to be that you can't have every defense contractor coming in with their own, separate set of red lines that they can adjudicate themselves and enforce unilater…

I think this is different. It’s a statement that this product is not qualified to perform that function(autonomous killing decisions). I think it is pure madness to think AI is currently up to this task. I also think it should be a war crime. I think congress should pass a law forbidding it.

There seem to be two separate lines of thought in this conversation: first, that the AI tech isn't smart enough for us to trust it with autonomously killing people. Second, even if it was smart enough, maybe such weapons are immoral to produce?

The first line of thought is probably true, but could change in the next 5 years-- so maybe we should be preparing for that?

The second line of thought is something for democracies to argue about. It's interesting that so many people in this thread want to take this power away from democratic governments, and give it to a handful of billionaire tech executives.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#528

Post by dsign »

david_shaw wrote: post #195

I'd prefer to see board (or executive) level signatories over lay employees -- the people who can enforce enterprise policy rather than just voice their opinions -- but this is encouraging to see nonetheless. I can't help but notice that Grok/X is not part of this initiative, though. I realize that frontier models are really coming from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google, but it feels like someone is going to give in to t…

> It's incredible how quickly we've devolved into full-blown sci-fi dystopia.

It's pretty bad, but at least the AI industry is still run by humans. Wait a decade or two, when the AI lobby is run by AIs, and the repressive apparatus of the day uses autonomous weapons to do what ICE and friends do today but perhaps focused on "alignment" of the ... humans. You know, if they sufficiently worship AIs in the way they express themselves. Forget about Anthropic and OpenAI; we will look back and rue the day mathematics was invented.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#529

Post by etchalon »

largbae wrote: post #423
w4yai wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other valid use cases than war for AI.

Of course there are. But once it exists, a technology will be used for all purposes. The choice is in the making, anything else is virtue signaling.

One second, I have to go turn my stove off. It could be used to start a forest fire.

Re: We Will Not Be Divided

#530

Post by etchalon »

Meekro wrote: post #525
markisus wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course a contractor could not decide to unilaterally shut off their missile system, because that would be a contract violation. A contractor may try to negotiate that unilateral shut off ability with the government, and the government should refuse those terms based on democratic principles, as Luckey said. But suppose the contractor doesn’t want to give up that power. Is it okay for the government to not only rej…

It sounds like the "supply chain risk" designation is just about anyone who works with the DoD not using them, so their code doesn't accidentally make it into any final products through some sub-sub-subcontractor. Since they've made it clear that they don't want to be a defense contractor (and accept the moral problems that go with it), the DoD is just making sure they don't inadvertently become one.

That is not what is happening and its weird that people keep insisting that is all that is happening.
Post reply on HN